Parody Comics: A Brief History - Part Six.

The Psychedelic Age

From the late 1950’s to the early 60’s, Parody Comics suffered through its worst time since the company’s launch. The revitalisation of DC and the emergence of Marvel had pushed Marty Feinberg’s company into the background and sales across the board had suffered, leading to the cancellation of one of their longest standing heroes – Hatman. “Marty always believed that we’d pull through it, even when we cancelled books…” explains Ian Watson, co-author on many of Parody’s titles. “He always used to say ‘if the quality’s there, so will the readers’. What we didn’t expect was to become a cultural phenomenon.”

Kirk Boxleitner

“I was nervous,” explains Kirk Boxleitner of his first meeting with Feinberg. “I had my portfolio, which had the title of the character, his powers, and so forth, but I got completely – and I mean COMPLETELY - shot down by the guy. [Laughs] He gave me a look I got used to very quickly when I was growing up: it said that he wasn’t entirely sure if I was joking and was wondering whether to be worried if I wasn’t. Of course, about 5 minutes later, he threw me out. Literally! The man had these huge panda hands! I always pictured him crushing filing cabinets like coke cans.”

“Kirk made Marty nervous,” explains Parody’s secretary, Babs Bennett. “He was this kid who looked like he’d just been charged by a nuclear power station. His energy is incredible…I don’t think he’s ever stopped moving in his entire life.”

Nevertheless, when Boxleitner came back the next day, Marty took another meeting with him, this time with the other writer at Parody, Ian Watson. “Kirk was frantic: He was jumping around the room just like his character, shouting catchphrases – ones that we couldn’t possibly use – and explaining motivations behind the character’s creation, his origin and his ancestor’s origin. When Kirk had left, Marty asked what I thought. I said the guy’s either a genius, or he’s certifiable. So Marty gave him and his character a try out on Tales [to Infuriate].”

Tales to Infuriate was Parody’s anthology title for trying out new heroes; the debutante of issue 38 in would gradually consume the title and make it his own; the character would be called Space Ghost.

“He came to me in a recurring dream,” explains Boxleitner. “Every time I’d been naughty and gotten away with it, he’d show up while I was asleep. Just imagine: a big butch guy, wearing no pants carrying a gun that could spank you - talk about Freudian! It’s lucky I didn’t join the army or something.”

Space Ghost, now seemingly a minor character in the Parodyverse, was a revolution in terms of storytelling. Borrowing ideas from surrealist film-makers such as Jean Cocteau and Luis Bunuel, Boxleitner conceived of a series that completely dispensed with conventional logic that instead relied on absurd humor and leaps of imagination to bemuse and entertain the reader in equal mounts. In short, it was brave, brilliant and like most of Parody’s other titles, ahead of its time.

Space Ghost’s first tale was characteristically entitled ‘Remembrances of Space Ghost on a summer lake in Geneva, circa 1843, while I was punting with my Dog, Tess, who was then pregnant with her 6 puppies, all of whom I shortly gave away to my friends.’ (The title was abbreviated to: ‘Remembrances of Space Ghost’ by Feinberg, the full title being published with subsequent reprints). The story begins with a man recounting his friend Space Ghost’s life. As we read the tale, it becomes clear that Space Ghost doesn’t exist in the man’s imagination as the man remembering these things really doesn’t exist, as he is just a figment of (the actual) Space Ghost’s imagination as he battles bank robbers. What begins as a Henry James historical pastiche quickly dissolves – over a scant 12 pages - into typical Silver-Age action, with Space Ghost triumphant at the end, and promising his dog that they would go punting one day.

There were many differences between Boxleitner’s original concept of Space Ghost and the finished product, the first being his state of dress. “There was no way the Comics Code Authority were going to let us publish a superhero that didn’t wear pants. I think I could hear Frederick Wertham scream when I even mentioned it, so we had the guy wear shorts…though I never explained that they were shorts,” explains Boxleitner. “I also had to lose all the swearing, but I knew that anyway. I just made up words, they sounded better anyway.”

Other tales would follow, all featuring the classic villains that carried over into later Space Ghost tales, some even crossing over to other titles, such as the demonic Ed Sullivan character, Satanivan. “Space Ghost eats the Most Roast Toast in a Tale to Irritate, Exsanguinate and Obliterate the Illiterate.” would follow shortly afterwards, featuring the first appearance of Rodney, the Patronising Git, who could harm people with the power of his alliterative insults. The effects of these characters would greatly affect Parody Comics, but not in the way they’d hoped…

Space Ghost

“I just knew I was going to be fired,” admits Kirk Boxleitner. Since the debut of Space Ghost six months prior, sales on the anthology title had bottomed out, as long-time readers abandoned the wild escapades of the pantsless wonder. “I thought I was this talentless fraud, masquerading as a comic-writer and who was quite willing to sob all over Marty’s desk if he just gave me another chance.”

“Marty wasn’t going to fire Kirk, as he knew the kid had talent,” explains Babs Bennett. “But I think he was definitely going to speak to him about some of the stories he’d been writing and offer some guidance. But before he did that, Albert called about what had happened in LA.”

Albert Feinberg, brother of Marty and co-publisher of Parody Comics, had been spending most of his time across the country in Los Angeles, trying to work a deal with a television company to produce a series based on one of Parody’s heroes. As he was leaving the studio, he was ambushed by a group of students from Berkeley, all with copies of Tales to Infuriate. “They kept telling me that this comic had completely connected with them, that they’d heard I was coming here and they wanted to just look at me,” explained Albert in 1984. “I thought they were crazy, but they told me that everyone they knew was reading it.” Albert rang his brother in New York to tell him the news. “Marty was unsure about the whole thing, he didn’t know what ‘hippies’ were, no one did in the early 60’s,” explains Boxleitner. “He told me that Space Ghost could continue in Tales as long as the readership didn’t continue to dwindle.”

Over the next 10 months, sales of Tales to Infuriate would triple, as the newest and most radical generation of the 20th century sought out the exploits of Space Ghost. The comic would become ‘Tales to Infuriate, Starring Space Ghost!’ and the plots would get stranger still: issue #48 features a story called “Death…in 48 panels!” where Space Ghost realises that someone will die at the end of the comic, so he breaks the fourth wall to implore the reader to tell him who and where it is. Looking at the last panel (the titular 48th) you see Space Ghost berating you for not telling him, upon which he decides to go on strike for 3 pages in protest, in which a stand-in was used (poorly sketched on purpose) until he’s removed by the jealous hero for taking his spotlight, upon which the story resumes as normal.

One famous and avid reader of Space Ghost was Ken Kesey, contemporary of Jack Kerouac and Alan Ginsberg, and who had just authored ‘One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ based on his experiences as a medical guinea pig. In 1999 he wrote an article for Newsweek on Space Ghost and why he was a favourite: “Space Ghost doesn’t give us answers, but what's really interesting is its mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer to him -- they think they have, so they stop thinking. But your job is to seek mystery in its panels, evoke mystery in between the panels, plant a garden there in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. In Space Ghost, we find mystery, and the need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.”

Robert Crumb, underground ‘comix’ artist would echo similar sentiments. “I think what Kirk Boxleitner did with Space Ghost is still astounding to me today. He threw away all the stale and tired bullshit that comes with the stigma of comic books and made something that’s just as fresh and interesting as it was when it was released.”

The extraordinary success of Space Ghost would have a knock-on effect on Parody’s other titles: Acting Comics’ Amazing Guy, whose stories were less absurd but infinitely more structured, would rocket in sales; Mr Epitome’s fan-base expanded, solidifying a comic that had also been threatened with cancellation; Defective Comics & Lair Legion would also see gains in circulation.

Success would not arrive without controversy however.

Space Ghost’s Super-Culture Clash

“It was a chanting, an angry focused chant directed at us,” explains Babs Bennett. The source was the Iowan Women’s League of Moral Values and Righteousness, who had travelled to the city in their dozens to protest against Parody Comic’s newest and brightest hero. Tales to Infuriate had become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

“I was on my way to work,” Boxleitner recalls of the experience. “And as I’m walking towards the building – which was a dump, let me tell you – I see about 50 women gathered outside. My instinct is to look up towards the roof and see if there’s a jumper, but as I get closer, I see they’re carrying placards and wearing badges and chanting. They’re chanting something like ‘Space Ghost is Satan’ or some other kind of crap, but they look dangerous. So I just walk right past them, right past the building and into a café down the road to call Marty to tell him that I wouldn’t be in today.”

The spokesperson for the Iowan Women’s League of Moral Values and Righteousness (IWLMVR) was Tammy Fay Wynfield, and in her speech to the swiftly gathering group of onlookers, she charged Parody Comics with “moral indecency”, “rampant depravity” and, bizarrely “communist tendencies”. “Her entire speech was on TV,” explains Ian Watson, who was in the building at the time. “This woman basically said that Space Ghost was the reason why people turn away from God. Marty was furious. I remember he leaned out of his window and started shouting at them – this was a 5 storey building in the middle of Manhattan, but he’d almost climbed out to tell them to shut the hell up.”

The IWLMVR would not give up however, and invited other “right-thinking” groups from across the country to join them. The siege lasted 2 months. “It was entertaining, in the most awful way,” observes Ian Watson. “All of the staff would have to sneak into the building in the early hours of the morning so we didn’t get assaulted by placards. Leaving was easier, as the women used to get fatigued around mid afternoon.” Sales of Space Ghost climbed even higher, as various women’s groups sought to find new “moral indignities” to rant about. Things came to a head one morning when the women’s groups took action. “They built a bonfire of Parody Comics and set it alight at our doorstep. They were burning comic books! The police stepped in after that, and the women left quietly. Then they went to someone who could stop us.”

Seeing that an appeal to their “morality” wasn’t going to stop Parody Comics, Tammy Fay Wynfield went to the Comics Code Authority (CCA) for legal help. The Chairman of the CCA at that time was John Kefauver, brother of the senator who chaired the commission into juvenile delinquency that led to the formation of the comic code in 1954. Tales to Infuriate had been on the CCA’s radar since its first publication, but expecting such a radical idea to quickly dwindle – and no doubt cowed by Feinberg’s relationship with Richard Nixon – they’d yet to make a move, but with Space Ghost’s unexpected success and with the IWLMVR (and the dozens of other such groups who taken part), the political pressure to act was immense. The CCA bent under the intensity and firmly stated that no further issues of Tales to Infuriate would be approved by them and without such backing, distributors would not carry the comic on their shelves, effectively halting the publication of the comic overnight.

“Marty looked for other ways to publish the comic: he talked about releasing it as magazine, just as Bill Gaines had done with MAD at EC,” explained Ian Watson. “He looked at getting distribution without the Code, which was impossible. But I think he eventually recognised that Space Ghost couldn’t continue, at least not for a while.”

Boxleitner understood. “Trying to get Space Ghost out there, Marty would’ve had to have risked the entire business, so I knew where he was coming from. I was angry, sure, but secretly, I think I was glad. Space Ghost had become this thing with such a level of expectation that it had become increasingly difficult to continue. I just wanted to write superhero comics – yes that were a little bit strange – but I still wanted to go on. I’m just glad that CSFB! came when he did, otherwise I’d have probably been stuck for a new idea.”

Tales to Infuriate dropped Space Ghost as its title character after just 17 issues in November 1963 and would become a Golden Age reprint comic for the remainder of the decade.

Catching Fire

“I got the call about 4 in the morning,” explains Babs Bennett. “And whenever you get that kind of call, you know its not good news.” The call was from Marty Feinberg, he had told her that the Parody Comics’ building was on fire. “I got dressed real quick and rushed down there. The entire staff was outside and we all just stood there in silence as we watched it burn.”

Fire-fighters spent hours combating the blaze, but to no avail. “Marty was really quiet,” John Buscema recalls. “It was the only time I saw him cry. I hated the place - it was cold and damp and smelt funny in the summer, the noise could drive you crazy… but to watch the place burn like that. It was heartbreaking.”

Ian Watson agrees. “I spent my entire life in that place, most of my youth I scrubbed its dirty floor, as an adult I sat in an office next to Marty, trying to figure out what plot I could come up with that the Dark Knight could combat, or how the Lair Legion could save the world this time…when I watched the building burn, all I could think about was my first day there back in the forties.”

“We never knew who or what caused it,” recounts Boxleitner. “It may have been that women’s group, who knows?”

With the building certified as unsafe, the “warehouse years” were over.

Parody would resume publishing comics after two months, by which time the company would already show signs of the major changes that were about to occur.

Next: The Psychedelic Age continues as the arrival of two super-star super-heroes make their debut, Parody Comics gets a new home and Amazing Guy becomes a TV star.

Post By AIH Wed Jan 18, 2006 at 11:34:18 am EST	Subject Parody Comics: A Brief History - Part Six.

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